REMARKS ON THE PRACTICE AND POLICY OF LENDING BODLEIAN PRINTED BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS.
BY
HENRY W. CHANDLER, M.A.
FELLOW OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD;
WAYNFLETE PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY,
AND A CURATOR OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY.
Oxford:
B. H. BLACKWELL,
50 AND 51, BROAD STREET.
1887
[iii]
PREFACE.
The present 'Remarks' are a reprint, with manyomissions and additions, of two privately printedpapers which were communicated to the Curatorslast year. From November, 1884, for about twelvemonths, I did very little more than watch attentivelythe way in which Bodleian business istransacted, to me at once a novelty and a surprise.For some purposes writing is preferableto talking, and accordingly in November, 1885,I printed a memorandum containing many gentlehints—φωνᾶντα συνετοῖσιν—which I faintly hopedmight eventually prove beneficial to the Library.Next came a Memorandum 'on the Classed Catalogue,'a thing which some Curators look on as amost valuable work, and others as an interminableand wasteful absurdity. This was followed by apaper 'on the Bodleian Coins and Medals', withsome observations on the proposal to transfer thecollection to the Ashmolean Museum. As far ascould be seen, all this expenditure of ink andmoney did no harm, and no good. In May, 1886,a committee was appointed to draw up regulationsfor loans of books; and in June the Curators receiveda paper 'on the lending of Bodleian Booksand Manuscripts,' as also Bishop Barlow's Argumentagainst lending them, then for the first time[iv]printed as a whole; and in both the illegality ofthe borrowers' list was pointed out, and verybroad hints given, not only that the present loanstatute is defective, but why, and in what mannerit is so. If these hints, facts, and arguments hadbeen addressed to the twelve signs of the Zodiac,they could not have produced less visible effect;and it was wonderfully amusing to find, that morethan half my brethren could not for the life ofthem see what to everybody else was plain as apikestaff; so on we went in the well-beaten path,steady as old Time himself, looking neither tothe right hand nor to the left, and, what is moreremarkable, never for one moment looking ahead.Finally, at the beginning of October, came a paperon 'Book-lending as practised at the Bodleian';and this proved to be the last straw; for onOctober 30th, partly by words and partly by thatsilence which gives consent, it was plainly intimatedthat these papers were unwelcome. Onefriend, and only one, had a good word to say forthem; so far as they contained collection of factshe approved of them, but no further. As my littleexperiment failed so lamentably, I am hardly likelyto repeat it, or to put so severe a strain on the goodnature and patience of my colleagues as ever againto trouble them with a scrap of printed paper.This puts me into a sort of quandary. I abhorpen and ink, and should like to hold my tongueand spare my pocket; but that is impossible asthings are. I cannot stand by and see men who[v]know no better trying (with the best possible intentions)to get the Bodleian on to an inclinedplane, down which it must rapidly slide to perdition,without loudly protesting against their acts.What then is to be done? Private feelings mustbe respected, yet not so as to impede the performanceof a duty to the Library and to theUniversity. The atmosphere of a meeting is notconducive to calm and rational discussion; I cannotmake speeches; the board does not relisheither facts or arguments